


FIVE TIMES ZEVRAN DIDN'T MIND THE MUD (AND ONE TIME HE ACTUALLY MISSED IT)

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 11:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A belated birthday fic for teapirate on tumblr; Cousland is heavily inspired by teapirate's Laran Cousland. Zevran and mud don't get along, but that doesn't mean he hasn't come to appreciate it. <i>It had cooling properties, though it did not smell as pretty as it might have. Given the circumstances, this was not so surprising as all that; it was dirt that had met with too much water—a natural thing, and like all natural things it was excessively disgusting.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	FIVE TIMES ZEVRAN DIDN'T MIND THE MUD (AND ONE TIME HE ACTUALLY MISSED IT)

I.

It had cooling properties, though it did not smell as _pretty_ as it might have. Given the circumstances, this was not so surprising as all that; it was dirt that had met with too much water—a natural thing, and like all natural things it was excessively disgusting.

To be fair, which Zevran was not often, it could not hope to be sweet as Orlesian packing scrub, the pots smuggled in through illicit contacts and past greased palms, shared by all the local women of the night and merchants’ wives alike—not to mention their equally vain husbands.

‘Well,’ Zevran said, spreading it across the bridge of his nose, while Cousland—pale shoulders broader than ever, a Fereldan complexion not suited to adapting with the same alacrity as an Antivan—scratched a drying flake off his chest. ‘Perhaps we might borrow that _rose_ the good Alistair has been keeping with him, yes? Just a few petals to sweeten the pot, as it were.’

Cousland laughed and Zevran followed, the mud cracking on his cheeks, hiding the scars and the tattoo ink, and he had to admit that his skin was so _smooth_ after, irresistible to the touch—not just his.

II.                                                                               

It found its stubborn way beneath the soles of all boots; somehow it was drawn overwhelmingly to leather; it coated the dwarf’s beard and the sten’s prominent brow and stuck in the golem’s cracks, in _Wynne’s_ cracks, in Morrigan’s private and therefore enticingly mysterious undergarments—which Zevran was _still_ not entirely convinced were even real. And all these made for topics of conversation to pass the not-so-idle time, stretches of landscape that ever rolled one into the other, beneath the drip of dogged spring rain.

After that, it was possible to miss the smell of it, so much _cleaner_ than the smell of wet dog.

The leather was sodden and the boots also, greaves shed and belts loosened, but it was even better to consider the effects it had on beaten silverite—chestpiece removed for proper cleaning, Cousland in the open camp, one fine spring dawn Zevran chose as always to rise early and watch: the stroke and scrub and flex and arch, the sweat damp upon the nape of the neck, the hair curling dark at the very back.

It was not the mud so much as the man who cleaned it, Zevran’s brow arched, the mabari also panting.

III.

He suggested they try it for themselves—‘Not exactly a roll in the hay,’ he admitted, with a shake of his head, ‘but I suppose _that_ would be more _Orlesian_ , no? And when in Ferelden, I am told we are not meant to so much as mention our closest neighbors. There is a Teryn hereabouts who finds it very unpleasant, for example. Let us not cross _him_ again.’

‘Fereldans _are_ all about making do with what we have,’ Cousland agreed.

‘And here I thought Fereldans were all about big dogs and even bigger—’ Zevran began.

He did not finish; there was no time for that. Fereldans were also about advantages taken and advantages won, about dragging others down into the puddles with them, about assuming all tastes were shared and all dirt could be cleaned with a few broad licks. Fortunately, dirt was not what they chose to lick that afternoon; Cousland was slightly more discerning than his dog, though adding _the taste of fine Fereldan mud_ to the long list of things that had been inside Zevran’s mouth at some point or another was never his intention.

So few things were. So few _good_ things had ever been.

IV.

It was a shared enjoyment of practicality but also of practical jokes that brought them together on more than one occasion, Cousland with a handful of Northern Prickleweed for Oghren’s smalls or switching the sugar for the salt in Sten’s cookies.

Alistair was a prime target, practically begging for it—and that was not the only thing for which he was practically begging, Zevran privately assumed, though he kept this keen assessment to himself, as some barbs were better left unshared, some prickles better left un-weeded.

It was not for Alistair’s sake he did this but for someone else’s, perhaps to ward off the simple spell of that rose he kept—Zevran had no such inclinations, no such ability to keep a delicate blossom alive, and knew only how to crush the petals into poison or repurpose the sharp thorns, not nurture them as the healthy Fereldan soil.

It managed, despite itself, to grow such pretty things.

Still, as Alistair wiped the remnants of the mudball from his eye, Zevran wondered if there was not a misstep in there somewhere, one of many.

‘No,’ Cousland said, readying a second volley between his palms. ‘But he’s probably _someone’s_ type, at least.’

V.

Zevran could smell it, taste it, _know_ it upon Cousland’s skin—pale as ever, but with a flush of heat beneath, at key pulse points where the heart itself appeared to beat. Zevran recognized those from a life of lessons hard-earned and well-learned, where to slice and where to cut, where to press the sharpest edge of the blade, which just so happened to be where the blood flowed thickest. And flow it did, against the bob and swallow, against the scrape of Zevran’s teeth as he drew them from jaw to collarbone, over one small scar he could not hope to heal.

He did and also did not wish to heal it.

This was only one of oh so many contradictions.

Then, he tilted his chin up and allowed the gesture in return—practically begging for it, one might say, though there was no _practically_ in the matter, no _practically_ between their bedroll’s linens.

‘You smell like mud,’ Cousland said, so quiet it could almost be imagined, though it was something Zevran had told him once—in lighter times, with laughter, though neither of them did _that_ any longer.

For this purpose, they made the other far too breathless.

VI.

He slept alone in Antiva City. There was not even the mud to keep him company, only the dusty breezes that blew in hot from the summer, thickened by the smoke from the tanneries, an old bitterness he had shared, a new memory he could not make. He left his window open not to let fresh air in but to let it out, because locks were meant to be picked, because temptation was meant to be met. There was a desk by one such open window; that was where he always read his letters and made his poisons, and sharpened his daggers to the eager, glinting points.

In the scroll of vellum unrolled before him there was a stain not of ink but of mud, a purposeful choice, like a thumbprint pressed as a seal beneath the signature. It spoke to the word above the name, the one Zevran had never hoped for—and therefore never considered.

‘Yours,’ Zevran agreed.

When he brought the paper to his lips he remembered what he had once thought he would always hate—not necessarily mud at all, but the love and the missing and the wanting of _things_ to stain him, perhaps forever.

 **END**


End file.
